For the past 11 years, Salesforce has been a partner with KONE through Salesforce Cloud Services Advisors. “In the early days, it was about the basic CRM journey,” Ehrnrooth said of KONE’s engagement with Salesforce. “But what's been so important with Salesforce is that we've been constantly able to develop and drive it to the next level.”

With urban populations growing at a rate of 200,000 per day, KONE is making its systems smarter and more integrated through analytics and artificial intelligence, in order to meet future demand for high-density development and bring more value to its customers. Its latest plans include an innovative pairing of Salesforce Einstein and IBM Watson IoT to streamline workflow for KONE’s equipment service technicians.

Since adopting Salesforce in 2006, KONE sales professionals in more than 55 countries have used Salesforce to manage opportunities, payments, and orders for both new equipment sales and service contracts. “Salesforce has clearly been one of our most important partners when we look at technology and information platforms,” said Ehrnrooth. “It's been something that has helped us develop KONE in a very significant way."

Antti Koskelin, CIO, said when the company began with Salesforce, “It was a bold move to go with a cloud-based platform, but it’s one we’ve never regretted. From the outset, we had really good user adoption rates. Salesforce is now deeply ingrained in our culture.”

“Salesforce has been a guiding light, showing us what is possible when you model everything around the customer.”

Sales Cloud automates KONE’s workflows for recurring actions, such as contract renewals and management approvals, and provides detailed insights that help to maximize productivity and profitability. “By providing full visibility of the opportunity funnel, Sales Cloud helps our teams prioritize their activities and be more productive,” said Sari Kola-Nyström, Head of Sales and Customer Experience Development for KONE’s New Equipment Business.

Salesforce is integrated with KONE’s CPQ (configure, price, quote) system, helping streamline the CPQ process so sales teams can spend more time focused on their customers. “Salesforce brings discipline and transparency to our sales processes; it underpins our entire operation,” said Kola-Nyström. “We have a policy that if it’s not in Salesforce, it doesn’t exist."

The company also used Lightning to build a specialist app called Sales Cockpit. “With the app, we can provide individual sales plans for every rep, including real-time visibility of their performance against targets,” said Kola-Nyström. “They can also use Salesforce to access key information while on the move.”

To ensure that KONE is getting the most from the Salesforce Platform, the company relies on a Premier Success Plan to help its teams accelerate execution while defining newer, better ways of working. “We’re in continuous dialogue with our Salesforce advisors, and it’s always time well spent,” said Kola-Nyström. “They help us to explore how we can optimize existing solutions and introduce us to new features that align with our customer experience goals.”

KONE leaders and Salesforce advisors have launched an Innovation Transformation Center (ITC) to give KONE’s field service operations access to better and more timely information. “With Salesforce, we can make our field services more proactive,” said Michael Williams, Head of Service Field Solutions Development for KONE’s Service Business. “This will improve equipment safety and reliability, and help us better understand our customers’ needs.”

KONE is working towards a future where the operating condition of more than 1.1 million of their escalators and elevators is linked with real-time customer information and maintenance schedules, which can be provided to any of the more than 20,000 KONE field service technicians around the world.

KONE is also working with Salesforce Einstein and IBM Watson IoT to create a single, end-to-end system for KONE technicians that will detect equipment problems and generate automated work orders within Salesforce.

In the future, the combination of Predictive Maintenance Analytics data from IBM Watson IoT and CRM data from Salesforce Einstein, will make new innovations possible in the elevator and escalator industry. Einstein Image Recognition, for example, can be used to identify products and parts, check them against current inventory stocks, and evaluate next steps for replacement or repair — all within a single integrated system.

“Just as Sales Cloud helps sales teams make the right decisions,” Kola-Nyström said, “Salesforce Einstein and IBM Watson IoT will both be helping the field guys, as well, to make the right decisions. You use the information from the field to understand what's best for the customer.”

The company also has plans to transform its ongoing engagement between customers and employees. “We’re currently piloting Marketing Cloud around customer journeys,” said Koskelin. “We’re also really excited about the potential for analytics in helping us gain greater insights into customer behavior.”

For example by combining its field service facilities information with customer sales account records, KONE will be able to achieve a 360-degree view of its customers, which will help simplify and accelerate expansion into new areas. “With a single source of information, we can provide customers with a consistent experience, whether they’re in Finland or China,” said Koskelin. “With Salesforce, we can stay close to our customers as we continue to grow our business.”

Ehrnrooth notes that KONE’s ability to adapt its service offerings to customer needs has never been so profound. “It’s hugely exciting,” he said. “And that's why we embarked some years ago in our service transformation, to truly show that there is clear differentiation [for the KONE brand]. We can see that, with great insight into individual customer needs, using technologies such as Watson, Einstein, and others, we can deliver a service that meets those needs in a much, much better way — a way that's never been done before.”

Originally a brick-and-mortar retailer, adidas quickly became an ecommerce champion. How? By prioritizing the digital experience and investing in a suite of Salesforce products that allow the company to get much closer to consumers.